Labor Day 2009: Job Losses, Falling Wages, EFCA Lies Dormant

Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post provides some basic stats. Bottom line:

If we fail to enact universal health care and laws that truly make it possible for workers to form unions again, each of our Labor Days will be grimmer than the last.

For a more indepth statistical look at jobs and labor in America, check out this post at the Economic Policy Institute site, or download your own copy of their fact sheet (pdf).

Just a taste:

TOTAL JOBS LOST DURING THE RECESSION: 6.9 MILLION

• New jobs needed per month to keep up with population growth: 127,000
• Jobs lost in August 2009: 216,000
• Jobs needed to regain pre-recession unemployment levels: 9.4 million
• Manufacturing jobs lost since the start of the recession: 2.0 million (14.6% of sector’s jobs)
• Construction jobs lost in the recession: 1.4 million (19%, nearly one in five construction jobs)
• Mass layoffs (50 or more people by a single employer) in July 2009: 2,157; jobs lost: 206,791

Personally, I don't see how we will ever recover our employment base, especially in terms of blue collar jobs, if we don't level the playing field by inserting strict labor provisions into our trade policies. There's no way we can compete with third-world workers who earn as little as pennies per hour -- and many of those third-world workers don't make a living wage in their own countries. Slave labor is rampant. And it's driving down American wages and creating misery around the globe while the fat cats chuckle.

Too many Democrats are good at merely paying lip service to labor and the union movement, but we need action, not more speeches once a year at Labor Day picnics. A good start: Congress must approve the Employee Free Choice Act, which was first filed in 2003 by Sen. Ted Kennedy on the 40th anniversary of his brother John's death. You can read more about that here and learn how we got into a situation that demands passage of such a law. It's the story of the creeping disintegration of America's middle class at the hands of a modern-day version of the robber barons.

SEIU makes it easy to contact members of Congress to urge them to support the Employee Free Choice Act.